This was my overriding concern almost every waking moment. I never knew when I was to be abused, because Dad would vary the situation. There would be times when everything would be in place but he wouldn’t touch me – even when Mum was at bingo, or the NAAFI, and Gary was playing in a football match, he would sometimes leave me alone. However, on those occasions, when I was left with no one but him, I shook with fear from the moment the door closed behind Mum and Gary. He would be sitting in the living room, drinking and smoking, and I’d be in my room – waiting. He would often shout through, ‘That’s the house empty now, Tracy,’ as if to warn me that, any moment, he might ask me to come through to him, but there were times that he seemed to just use those occasions to taunt me. I would spend two or three hours awaiting my fate, knowing it was entirely up to him.
Can you imagine what that does to a child? There were times when I almost willed him to get it over with, and that is unforgivable. What sort of man, what sort of father, has his five-year-old daughter in such a state of fear that she almost wants him to begin the abuse so she will at least know there will be an end to it for that day? Perhaps that was just another way for him to get his perverted kicks. Almost every instance of abuse involved him also telling me that I liked it, that I enjoyed it, that I was a dirty little bitch who wanted it, so I don’t think he gained sexual pleasure during the times he violated me from my fear alone. I certainly think that was another aspect of his character at other times, such as when he teased me about whether it would happen that day or not, so there is a chance that he was conditioning me to be entirely compliant. If I had turned into his nasty, paedophilic dream and become willing to engage in his horrors, maybe I would have been hit less, maybe I would have suffered less verbal abuse – but I couldn’t do it; the times when I almost wished for it to begin so it would be over as soon as possible left me feeling even worse.
I would suffer through it all. I’d bear it for my mum. But I would never want these horrible things. At that stage, and up until I was about eight, I would always wonder what he would do to me each time. No matter his chosen form of abuse, each one had its own horrors. When he touched me in places that were so private, I felt so ashamed. I knew it was wrong, that a daddy shouldn’t do these things, but it was also very painful. I was only little, and he wasn’t gentle. His nasty, grown-up hands and fingers went to parts of me that should never have been violated – afterwards, it would be hard for me to go to the toilet and sometimes to walk.
On the occasions when he touched himself to the point of orgasm beside me, I would feel sick at the smell. I had no idea what it was, but I finally realised that he must want that vile sticky stuff to come out of his private parts because he seemed to calm down afterwards. While it was going on, his face was terribly contorted and I would wonder if he was unwell – as he did it more and more, I eventually realised this was just part of it. He had to make these funny faces and funny noises for the sticky stuff to come out. He would touch me with one hand while he did that, and touch himself with the other. If I screwed my face up or gagged, or gave any indication that I didn’t want to be there, he would release one hand to slap me or punch me in the kidneys, before going back to what he was doing.
These were ghastly ‘activities’ and I hated them with all my heart, but the worst was when he made me touch him. Since the first time he had forced that on me, it had haunted me and I dreaded it beyond everything else. As time went on, he would find even more horrors to inflict on me and I took it all, all to save my mum.
He had a face for everyone. I don’t have to say again what he was to me, but I’m sure the neighbours and everyone on the base thought he was a martyr for looking after us whenever Mum was unwell. Men always get more credit for that than women do, and in those days it was even more unusual for a dad to take care of his kids, even though the reality was that I really wasn’t being looked after at all. By the time I was eight, and the abuse had been going on for three years, he was explicit about my role in his life.
He had started coming into my room to abuse me the year before. Now that my own personal space had been violated as much as my body, I had no safe area in which to disappear. He could get me anywhere – I was fair game in any room of the house. I could barely remember a time when this hadn’t been happening. In fact, I had always had a strange feeling that something wasn’t quite right in my life and remember how I used to hide in the cellar when we lived on another base. I recalled that one of the caretakers on the base found me one time and I was sobbing when he took me back home, but I wasn’t quite sure why.
In all truth, I have no idea whether I was abused before we moved to Germany. My dad’s character had seemingly changed so quickly and so markedly on that first night when my mum was taken into hospital, but I wonder sometimes whether that had actually been the starting point or whether there was more that even I couldn’t bring to the front of my mind.
Nothing seemed to inspire my dad. Apart from reading his spy books and cowboy stories, he did little else. He was drinking a lot through these years. That didn’t excuse what he did, but it must have had an effect on his mood, and perhaps he used it to make it easier in some ways for him to do what he did. I almost hope so – I hope he needed some anaesthetic for what he did to me. I wish I’d had something. He would meet other soldiers in the halfway house, the pub they all frequented nearby. The pub had a German name but everyone called it the halfway house as it was halfway between the camp and the town. He was definitely different with them and they all would say what a great guy he was; it was just another aspect of his split personality.
Sometimes Gary and I were allowed to meet him in the taproom when it was time for him to walk home. Gary had been allowed to do this much more than I had, as I guess Dad would have worried about me even coming to somewhere of his choosing as there were too many chances for me to meet someone along the way and get chatting. By the time I was allowed, I was in such fear of him and so worried about my disobedience putting Mum back in hospital if I ever said ‘no’ that he felt safe enough letting me out. The first time I walked into the taproom, it seemed overpowering. It was loud and smelled of beer – a stench I hated as I associated it with my dad hurting me. There was a lot of laughter and people seemed to be happy, but that was alien to me.
Dad was sitting near the door with friends and I saw him as soon as I went in. He waved me over, unsmiling, and I stood next to him at the end of the table. Back then, when I noticed how these other men were with him, I didn’t know the appropriate word to use to describe the relationship they seemed to have and their attitude towards him. It came to me some years later – respectful. They were extremely respectful towards Dad. In fact, they were like that with each other too, but even more so with him. Around them were just the normal sounds of groups of blokes winding down after a difficult day at work. They’d be laughing and joking, sometimes singing, but always good-natured. It was different at my dad’s table that night, and every other night I went for him.
‘Stand there,’ he said when I walked up to the table. ‘This is my daughter, Tracy,’ he told the others. I thought that was quite strange – they obviously knew him, and they must have all known who lived where and what sort of families they had, but he was being very formal. None of the other men even said hello. I could hear all the noise from the rest of the pub, but it was as if everything was silent at that table. After what seemed like ages, he took his coat from the back of the chair and said, ‘Right, let’s go.’
All of the men got up and put their jackets on too. They shook hands with each other, and no one was missed out. There were no slaps on the back, no camaraderie. Dad pushed me back towards the door and we walked home in silence. It was very peculiar. When I told a friend about this as an adult, she asked whether my dad had been in the Masons. I have considered that, but, if he was, he never mentioned it, nor did he ever seem to go to meetings, wear Masonic regalia, or even have anything good going on in his life which might have suggested he knew people in the right places.
No, the real reason was, I believe, much more sinister.
He was showing me to other men who had the same depraved needs as he did.
I’m not imagining that, and what happened on other occasions adds more evidence to my understanding of the situation. Every time I saw Dad with these friends, every time I went to the taproom for him, they were the same people. They sat away from everyone else; no other soldiers approached their table. There were no laughs; there was no sense of fun. They kept their voices down and they always had that formal approach to each member of their group.
The weekend after I met him in the halfway house for the first time, he had to work on the Saturday morning. This often happened. On this occasion, he woke me up early. ‘Get up and get dressed,’ he snapped. ‘You’re coming to work with me.’ I did as I was told. As we walked to his office, the only conversation we had was when he told me how to behave.
‘If anyone comes in, keep quiet. Speak if you’re spoken to, but keep it short and sweet,’ he instructed.
There was a steady stream of other personnel coming in, and I didn’t have any concerns about any of them. They were friendly to me and most of them would say, ‘Who’s this you’ve got in with you today then?’ Dad wouldn’t elaborate at all. He’d simply say, ‘My daughter, Tracy,’ and answer their question or give them what they needed. I’d smile shyly, but say nothing, wary of how he had told me to behave. Quite often, other clerks would come in, and they were all nice to me. There was, again, a lot of respect shown to him. No one was there for small chat exactly, but he would just coldly give them what they needed and hurry them out.
Until one man came in. I thought I recognised him from the halfway house, but I couldn’t be sure, given that no one really engaged with me there either. He didn’t ask who I was, but my dad said to him immediately, ‘This is Tracy.’
The man nodded.
All I remember is that they said a few inconsequential things to each other, along the lines of ‘everything all right?’ and comments like that.
Nothing else happened that day, and I went with my dad for a few weekends after that and the same things happened. He stopped working on Saturdays and Sundays after a while, and started to go on exercise instead. Exercises were compulsory and happened at least twice a year. The men would go away from their families. All or most of the camp would go, usually for a week or two, and at least once a year they had a long one which lasted between four and six weeks. Dad was exempt from most of these because of Mum’s illness but at times he seemed to opt back in – I think he didn’t like them because of his laziness more than anything, and I suspect he was shown up by the real soldiers when he went on them. I was surprised when he started going on them. After a few weeks, he told me that help was needed in the kitchen and that he’d volunteered me. I was still too young for that sort of thing really, but as I’d been doing so much around the house for so many years now, it didn’t surprise me.
When we got there, he didn’t go off with the others; he took me into the kitchen. We were the only ones there early on and he started explaining things to me. There was an old toasting machine, the sort where you place the split rolls on a tray and they roll through, getting toasted on the way before they drop off the end. I was told to do hamburgers that way too, four at a time. It was quite a small place, maybe about eight feet long and just wide enough for someone to stand at the toasting machine with no one behind them. The mess itself had a huge kitchen, but this area was really just for making snacks. Given the way it was laid out, I was squashed almost in a corner making the rolls as other people came in, some to get the hot drinks ready, others to grab something to eat. People said ‘hello’ or mentioned how nice it was for me to help out, but Dad had already given me his usual speech about not engaging with others, so I didn’t chat.
He was standing on the other side of the partition where we handed food through when I heard someone say, ‘Where’s Tracy?’ I didn’t know anyone, so couldn’t imagine why there would be a man asking for me by name. I didn’t hear my father replying to him, but seconds later a burly chap came in and headed straight for me. I was still standing over the toasting machine and he walked over behind me, squeezing past everyone else.
‘Hello there, young Tracy,’ he said, smiling.
I said ‘hello’ back to him, and kept my head down as I made the burgers. I suspected Dad was somewhere nearby and I didn’t want to get into trouble for talking – not that I particularly wanted to talk to this man anyway.
‘Busy?’ he asked as he moved closer. I looked behind me at him and said nothing. He was very close to me. There wasn’t much space where I was working anyway, but he had chosen to put himself there. As I moved the burgers and bread rolls through the machine, he pushed the front of his body into the back of mine. It was like the situation when Dad made me change the duvet cover all over again. I had no idea what to do – if I drew attention to what was happening I feared I would get into trouble. All the things Dad regularly called me, all the blame he laid on me for what happened, went through my mind. The kitchen was busy and no one was paying attention to what was going on. This man was pressing hard into me and I knew what I could feel; I had felt Dad’s often enough. He was getting harder and harder and he had a horrible grin on his face.
All of a sudden, I heard Dad call ‘Graham!’ from the door of the kitchen.
The man moved away from me, slapped me on the backside, and waved. ‘Harry!’ he called, walking towards him. ‘Something wrong?’
My Dad didn’t answer immediately. When he did, he just said, ‘No, nothing’s wrong – a word, if you don’t mind?’ Graham left the room with him and I continued making the food. I knew I couldn’t get upset and I knew I had to keep going through the motions or there would be a few hard punches and slaps waiting for me when we got home.